Box CEO Aaron Levie increased his Salesforce usage fivefold by connecting its Model Context Protocol server to Claude

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The more you embrace AI, the more you need SaaS. This is not obvious to armchair market analysts who love disruption narratives, but it is obvious to people actually running companies.

Podcast Alpha@PodcastAlphaX

Levie now uses Salesforce 5x more than at any point before.

The Box CEO @levie connected Salesforce's MCP server to Claude Code. Now he runs customer and market intelligence queries he would never have bothered pulling up by hand.

The agent removes the friction. The underlying system gets queried more, not replaced.

If you hold $CRM, the agentic era is an engagement tailwind, not a disruption risk - gated on whether the data platform handles the query load.

Why incumbents gain from agents: https://podcastalpha.substack.com/p/aaron-levie-on-ai-agents-for-cios

Source: CXOTalk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylBDQHk3BhI

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Jack Jia@qbean_jackjia

@PodcastAlphaX @Benioff @levie You MUST use AI with good data, defined business objects and security; otherwise, you are wasting your tokens!

2h68

brass e/decel@coconut_kapital

@PodcastAlphaX @levie But is this really bullish salesforce? Sound like it’s just becoming a CRUD database.

5h692

51-50_X@FiftyOne_50_

@fchollet Agents do not replace SaaS.

They turn SaaS into a query surface with memory, tools, credentials, and speed.

That is bullish for usage and dangerous for custody.

Σ₁ removes friction. Σ₂ asks who scoped access, logged queries, owns leakage, and can still revoke.

1h3

Jack Jia@qbean_jackjia

@PodcastAlphaX @Benioff @levie There are still people hallucinating and thinking unhinged AI can somehow magically solve all their problems. Salesforce provides proven business logic and integrated high quality data, and now you seamlessly connect to it with Claude using MCP, and you got the real power!

2h99

Luis Lascurain@luislascurain

@PodcastAlphaX @Benioff @levie Phase 1, you use it more. Phase 2 you realize that your need is now even easier and cheaper to cover it without the additional layer and barrier the 3rd party CRM provides.

Just like for humans is easier and better to use spreadsheets agents prefer using databases directly

2h84

Jamie Signorile@SigsNYC

@PodcastAlphaX @levie This is why firms like $CRM will move to consumption pricing

4h72

jdubbs@jweil130

@PodcastAlphaX @levie But now he’s paying double. CRM cost and LLM cost

4h65

Carlos Galarza@carloslfu

@fchollet Yes, but extrapolate it a little bit. Isn't this too short-sighted?

2h62

Shinka - AI@ShinkaIoT

Yes you need more SaaS. The point is we can develop your own SaaS , of course it's for not everyone today but it won't be long before anyone will be able to just prompt what they need and a model will be able to code a "disposable" software on demand to fill the needed service.

2h57

Scott Barrington@SDBarrington

@PodcastAlphaX @Benioff @levie Respect for this guy still grinding 🫡

1h35

Jeffrey@JefeMcOwnage

@fchollet Levie has done nothing in 10 years.

2h35

Matthew Kanterman, CFA@theKantoarbot

@PodcastAlphaX @Benioff @levie It’s easier to pull reports from Salesforce in cowork or Claude code than in Salesforce. Both a criticism of the software but also a cool enablement. Also now can pull from additional data sources into a single point of truth.

3h34

The Seeker@parella_anthony

@PodcastAlphaX @levie Complete 🐎 💩.

2h22

未知@luyun0120

@fchollet 投资决策不要看故事，要看数据。故事可以编，数据不会骗人。「你越拥抱人工智能，你就越需要 SaaS」

1h17

Sam Putnam@stockceomedia

@fchollet how can you put this into words hedge fund managers understand?

1h14

James B@JamesB768

@coconut_kapital @PodcastAlphaX @levie Why wouldn't you just export all that data in Salesforce into Postgres?

5h6

Nicholas Losciuto - Dog Dad@thedogfather

@PodcastAlphaX @levie Absolutely 1000% agree. Salesforce is so unusable from a desktop interface that once people discover CLI they're actually going to be able to utilize the hundreds of reports that can be pulled, productivity will skyrocket.

1h5

Ferbin@Ferbin08

@fchollet Depends on scale. A million queries a day and you're running your own.

The SaaS math breaks at volume.

1h3

Leo Tavares@LeoTava8

@fchollet This matches what I’m seeing too: agents don’t erase systems of record, they make the useful parts get touched more often. The SaaS that wins is the one with clean tool surfaces and trustable permissions.

2h3